


jael

by peradi



Category: Jessica Jones - Fandom
Genre: Amnesia, Child Abuse, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Kilgrave is a monster, Kissing, Lesbians, Motherhood, Multiple Pov, OFC - Freeform, Oral Sex, Slow Burn, mother daughter relationships, references to past noncon, what if killgrave kept jess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:24:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5521964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/pseuds/peradi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything that could go wrong does, and Kilgrave keeps Jessica.</p><p>Fifteen years later. Trish finds a bloodied body on her morning run. Dorothy Walker's been told that the cancer has metastasized, and will do anything to stay alive. Jeri Hogarth finds herself defending a strange girl accused of murder, who keeps asking for her Aunt Patsy. </p><p>Stories that have been fermenting for years are coming together, and one woman is at the centre. Time is running out for Jessica Jones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the start of it all.

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first attempt at a multi-chaptered fic. hope you enjoy! by the way, i know nothing about the us legal system so i can only apologise if it makes no sense. 
> 
> comment away. seriously: any and all constructive criticism is appreciated.
> 
> the first chapter is deliberately confusing: lots of stories start here, then spiral outwards.

 

>   _What does it matter now? No, no, nobody left the skidmarks of sin_  
>  _on your soul and laid you wide open for Hell. You were loved._  
>  _Always. We did what was best. We remember your childhood well._

_from **'We Remember Your Childhood Well.'**_ by Carol Ann Duffy

 

 

Juni Hogarth doesn't like children. 

She's never had them. She's never wanted them. She detests the shameful, patronising stereotype that abounds nowadays: all lesbians want kids! Grab the turkey baster, prepare the tupperware box of borrowed sperm, let's get going. 

That's why she and Pam broke up. Now she's single. tumbling from bed to bed like most of her colleagues -- a string of pretty young things that like women with sharp tongues and cold eyes and don't look for commitment. 

It's a shallow existence, but it's one she's content with. 

Anyway. She hates children. She doesn't like to be around them, and she's never worked with one --

Until now, of course. 

The girl calls herself Jael, which is an absurd name. 

"Biblical reference?" she says, sliding into place opposite her client. 

"I like it," the girl says. She claims she's sixteen. That's a lie. Her chest is flat; her hips are boyish, slim and unformed. 

"I'm Jeri."

"Can I call you Hogarth?"

"If you like."

"I would like."

The girl's got the look of something pulled from oceanic depths: oil-slick hair curtaining a face that's eighty per cent bone. Fish-white skin, and eyes the black of a trench between techtonic plates. Narrow shoulders are swamped by a leather jacket. Her legs are hidden beneath the fall of a black maxi-skirt, the sort that Mormon sister-wives wear. 

"Then do. Jael -- "

"Can you call me Trish?"

"Why?"

"It's my name. Well. My Mum called me that. My Dad -- "

"Your Dad?"

"Mainly called me 'get out of my fucking way'." There's no fear in her voice when she says it. There's not much of anything in her voice: it's a colourless monotone, vaguely English in origin, but the syllables are clipped hard, like she's having to think about each word she's saying. Second language maybe? Is the slant of those cheekbones indicative of Nordic parentage or just starvation?

Both, probably. 

The girl needs a hot meal. 

She's not got one though. She's got a murder charge and a shark-mouthed lawyer, and she's got an open sore at the corner of her mouth that's not -- as one might guess at first -- herpes but a cut, freshly scabbed. 

That, together with the ripening of her lower lip into a bruise, is the beginning of a defense.

"Not a nice man then."

"Something like that," says call-me-Trish, one corner of her mouth yanking up in what's meant to be a smile. It's a piss-poor attempt. 

"And here we are," says Jeri. Trish attempts her smile again. She smiles like no one's ever taught her what delight's meant to look like.

"Here we are. I didn't kill him. The man, that is," she says. Her voice doesn't change. She might as well be reading about the weather.

"Well, that answers that question. Next one. How old are you? Really?"

"I turned twelve two months ago."

"Honesty is important."

"I could never lie, growing up. It's a luxury." Her hands flex within the handcuffs. Her fingernails are absent entirely; the ends of her fingers are gory shreds. Well. Nail-biter. She notices the direction of Jeri's look, curls her fingers into tight little fists, flushes hot with shame. "I used to bite my nails," she says.

"Huh. What do you mean -- you could never lie?"

"Dad didn't permit it."

"You're not from round here, are you?" says Jeri instead, dodging the glaring string of questions that anyone with half a heart would go for.

"Born in London. Raised around Europe. Dad was English. Mum was American."

"Was?"

"I don't know if they're alive or not."

"You ran away from home?"

"Something like that." She doesn't smile this time. Her eyes -- black at first glance, second glance showing the hints of copper threading brown -- fixate on a point somewhere over Jeri's left shoulder. 

"Don't evade," Jeri says. 

"I ran. Please don't try and find them."

"I'm your defense attorney, not your social worker. I have to ask though. Who's paying for me?"

"A friend."

"Says here your friend is forty three, a widower and has a bad knack for shagging underage hookers."

"He's a friend. He's paying, isn't he?"

"That he is. And, strangely, social workers aren't all over this like a rash --"

"He's my legal guardian. There's paperwork and everything."

"So you're adopted --"

"Yes. Does this matter?"

"Maybe. Why Jael?"

"She was kickass. Biblical girl. You know --"

"I do, actually." Sunday school has left it's mark. "So you're...in the care of Mr Tennant."

"For the time being."

"Time being?"

"Look," and for the first time the girl's voice sharpens with annoyance. "I hired you 'cos you're a bitch. That's the _point_. Get me off. Get me off, and forget about me." 

It's not _untrue_. Jeri shrugs one shoulder, turns the page on the file. "Hm. So, tell me. Why did you kill Mr Ambrose?"

"I didn't kill him." Trish's voice, once again, sings into emotion. Bright with conviction. Trembling gold with  _believe me please_.

"How did he die?"

"He slit his wrists in front of me. It was very upsetting."

"Why did he do that?"

"He was a paedophile. Clearly very disturbed."

"You seem remarkably calm about this."

"I'm a calm person."

"You're twelve. Twelve year olds aren't calm unless there's something wrong with them."

"Like I said. My Dad was a bad person. I learned to be calm. Or --"

"Or what?"

"He's not a nice person. Can we talk about the uh, the murder?"

"Someone saw you get into the car with him. CCTV shows that you were with him a minute before he died in a parking lot, wrists open, blood everywhere. You were found at the scene of the crime. Police report says that you confessed."

"I never. I said that it was my fault."

"Your exact words were: he died because of me. I killed him."

"...I was in shock?"

"Excellent defense. Let's start with that. You're a minor, but the man's family are pushing for an adult's trial. Doesn't help that you're..." and here Jeri trails off, flutters one hand at Trish, taking in the blank gaze, the paleness, the Grudge-chic hair.

"A bit creepy?" And, as if to add to the impression, little Trish smiles her crooked, strange smile again. 

"Exactly."

"Get me in front of the Ambroses," says the girl, sudden. There's colour in her voice again. This time it's iron.

"I can't do that." Jeri's forehead corrugates. "Do you understand how this works?"

"Do it. Listen.  _Do it_. D'you understand? That's an  _order_."

The girl's eyes are brown. Yes. Brown, so dark brown they teeter on the edge of black but still brown, and they are sunk deep into hollow sockets and she is staring, oh how she stares

(there is something very wrong with her)

how she stares. 

Jeri's falling. She's falling so fast and so far and she isn't moving at all, her spine is curved gargoyle-like over the table, and her mouth hangs slack and the girl's eyes do not leave hers. 

"Do you understand?"

She's falling. 

As if from the end of a long, dark tunnel she sees her mouth move, shape the words: "Yes. I do."

 

\--

 

Trish is out for her morning jog. The sky flexes towards the horizon, a line fractured by skyscrapers, and she picks out the clearest path up the hill. Trees stretch skeleton fingers to the wind. Lucent streaks of sunlight jag between clouds, and the cold aches against her sweat.

Thud of her feet, thud of her heart. She's a machine, slick and oiled, and every part of her works in perfect synchronicity with the rest. 

She is thirty five. She has a radio show every morning. She has written four crime thrillers -- not to critical acclaim but to steady sales and a wonderfully casual fanbase, who will write her polite suggestions for what she should do next but never really get inflamed when she doesn't take their ideas into account. She has a restraining order against her mother, after a particularly memorable explosion three years ago. 

Three weeks ago, she found her first grey hair. 

She's not old -- not in the slightest -- but she's settled into her life, and there's a maturity she never would have imagined herself achieving when she was twenty and wild. Life, she finds, is like a pair of new leather shoes. It tears you up while you settle into it, but once you do it nestles around you, safe and secure. 

She rounds the corner and there, in the shadow of a winterbare tree, is a body. 

It's not the first homeless woman she's seen sleeping in the park, and it won't be the last. Still. She pulls one earbud out, lopes forwards, calls out, "Hey! You okay?" because the city has not rendered her utterly heartless. 

The shape stirs. Hair flutters this way and that like a tattered flag, and the woman sits up. 

And she looks around. Trish sees the full-moon of her face.

The world sharpens and contracts and all of a sudden Trisha's feet can't hold onto the ground and the sky is bending towards her, the sun tilting and sloshing around and the air is rushing over her over her over her and her heart is surging her blood is in her ears and --

She heaves in a breath. Plants her soles down hard, closes her eyes. She meditates every day, focuses on the surge of air in and out of her lungs; and this is what she does now, tasting oxygen as it slides down her throat, slick and wet. 

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale --

Yes. 

She opens her eyes again. Perhaps half a minute has passed. The woman is staring at her still.

Her face is very pale and very thin. Her eyes are huge and black.  Her hair is a tangle. Her mouth is bruised. 

She is fifteen years older. She is dressed in a tattered black shirt and jeans and her feet are bare and bleeding. 

Her name is Jessica Jones, and she has come home.

 

\--

 

Jeri comes back to herself slowly, then all at once. 

She is in a house that she does not recognise, with people she does not know, and a child holds her hand. She has no memory of how she got here. 

Her throat is lined with glue. She swallows, and her razor-bright mind starts to whir, gears churning out smoke. 

There is a woman in front of her. Red hair, fat, breasts sagging for want of a bra, clothes stained with sweat; face blotched scarlet from weeping. Eyes puffy and leaking, like there's an infection simmering in her corneas. No. Not infection. Just grief. 

(Though that is an infection all its own, Jeri muses, absently.)

Anyway. The girl, the one holding her hand, looks vaguely familiar 

( _call me trish)_

but Jeri can't place her. One look at the girl's face -- pale and pinched and vulpine -- and a cold shudder runs under her skin, an instinctive surge of  _beware_ and she snatches her hand back. 

The girl doesn't react. Her eyes are fixed on the fat red woman. 

( _there is something very wrong with her eyes --)_

"Take your daughter and drive. Don't come after me."

Her voice is colourless. A monotone. Wednesday Addams. 

( _this has happened before --)_

"I --"

"Take the girl! Take your money! Drive!"

Barks of sound. Blood starts to run from the child's nose, extravagantly red against the white of her flesh. 

Jeri starts to step back: slowly, measured, groping in her pockets for her car keys. She finds them. Her phone is missing. 

Doesn't matter. She can get another. 

The woman utters a hard, broken sob; and then she spins around (rolls of fat moving in elegant undulations) and she gathers up a barefoot toddler from the stairs and that's it, she's gone. 

The girl collapses. The blood is flowing freer now, puddling around her mouth and oozing from her ears. 

The air around her smells of carrion. 

Jeri closes her eyes, forces herself to remember. 

( _I am trish i did not kill that man do you understand that is an ORDER --)_

"What did you do to me?"

The girl does not respond. She's slack as death, one hand sprawled half-open. Jeri rolls her over, red smearing her fingers -- she wipes her hand on the girl's blouse -- holds her knuckles over the lips (which are split open, blood scabbing purple in the cracks) and there we are, butterfly-breath against her flesh. 

Alive. Alive. 

Yes, okay. She's not got a dead child on her hands. Excellent.

"Wake up! Trish!" She slaps the girl on the cheek. 

Her eyes flutter open. Breath comes whistling, like she's hauling air in through a straw. "Look --"

(look at me that's an order)

Jeri's a good lawyer because she's got good instincts: feral and honed, wolf-sharp. She slaps a hand over the girl's eyes. 

"Tell me what's going on."

The girl tries to thrash. Jeri mantles her, knees bracketing the sharp juts of her hips, using her bodyweight to pin her down. She thinks of vultures pinning down fawns, striking for the warm heart; she thinks of how it felt to have her decisions stripped from her, marionette for this monsters entertainment, memory like water, sliding and slipping and if she can't trust her brain what can she trust?

She grasps the girl -- Jael, Trish, whatever -- by the throat. 

Manicured fingers start to squeeze.

To her astonishment, the girl goes still. Her eyelashes flutter against Jeri's palm. 

"Please don't kill me," she says. Her voice is as colourless as ever. 

"What have you  _done_?"

"I just want to find my aunt," the girl says. "Her name is Patsy Walker."

 

\--

 

_Hey, what are you doing? Biting your nails? Mummy hates it when you do that, she told me so. Yes she did. Yes she did. Mummy loves me more than you. She does. She does._

_I didn't say **stop --**_

 

\--

 

Jessica opens her eyes.

There's a ceiling.

There's a sofa.

She's here. She's alive. Her heart is beating. 

She lifts one arm. She does this because she chooses to. She does this because it is her arm, and because she wants to lift it and so she lifts it. 

This is such a revolution that she bursts into tears. 

"Hey, hey. Baby. Come on. Calm down."

"I can  _move my arm."_

 _"_ Hey, hey, it's okay," and Jessica can't stop crying, and all Trish can do is hold her. 

 

 


	2. jeri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeri finds herself in the middle of something she does not understand. Her quest to discover what the hell is happening leads her to the dying mother of a former child star.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This plays pretty fast and loose with canon. In this universe, Kilgrave took Jessica when she was twenty. She is now thirty five. It's set pretty much in the modern day.

The wind steps white over city streets. Rain turns to snow, and clots of it gather in the corners of the windowpane, and Jeri really should be in her own bed with the pretty girl from accounts -- and yet here she is, with a girl who is sometimes Jael and sometimes Trish and sometimes nothing at all.

"You could have left me," says the girl, after an ache of silence, "and you didn't. Thank you."

She's got the cringing gratitude of a kicked dog. It's sickening. Jeri doesn't reply. She looks at her hands: the long spidery fingers, the rings, the Tiffany watch. 

Those hands had, not so long ago, encircled the child's throat, ready to kill. 

She's pushing fifty. She thought that she had long learned every corner of her mind, every dark and terrible place, every starry thought -- and yet she's still shocking herself. Self discovery is a strange kind of pain. 

 

\--

 

This is what happened, just after Jael-Trish had slackened under Jeri's grasp. 

"I was told," the child said, the words tottering out like long-legged fawns, "that if I were to ever get free then I should go to Aunt Patsy in New York. Mum told me. Mum made me promise."

"Get free?" Jeri echoed. One hand sweating around the child's eyes. One tight and firm at her neck. White indentations appeared around the spike of her fingers, and she felt the girl's throat quiver with the struggle for breath. "You were a prisoner."

"My Dad --"

"If you say 'was not a nice man' I'll throttle you," Jeri said, calm and flat and perhaps she meant it and perhaps she didn't and what scared her most of all was the fact that she did not know which. 

"My Dad kept us prisoner," the girl said. "My Dad kept her...kept her. And he did the same with me. But then I tried to fight back. And he tried to make her kill me. And she didn't. And I ran. And here I am."

The girl's throat was pulsating in earnest now, frantic against Jeri's palm. Jeri lessened the pressure. The girl coughed, and dampness started to ooze from her eyes. 

"And I just want my aunt."

"What did you do to me?" Jeri said again. They called her a bulldog, her colleagues, a bulldog in lipstick -- and she was never insulted by the comparison. That was why she was so good at her job. Find the pertinent issues and never let go. Follow the trail through whatever misdirection the client or the court throws up. 

That's what the girl's story was: misdirection. 

It was heartless. Pam would be appalled. 

But Pam was long gone, and Jeri was at home with her own ruthlessness. 

"I can control people," the girl said. "I tell them to do things and they do. Like my Dad. But I'm not as strong as he is. I'm never going to be as strong as he is, but I'm strong enough to do things like...like convince an old man to adopt me, to pay for my lawyer. But that's going to stop working. Probably already has. Wears off after about six hours. And..." she trailed off again. 

Jeri tensed her fingers again. Just a fraction. She could feel the tube of Trish's windpipe, flexible under soft skin, and she could feel it sliding from one side to the other, seeking to escape, and then she felt it start to  _fold_ \--

Trish gagged. "-- _eyes_ ," she managed. 

Jeri let go of the throat entirely. The girl coughed, but didn't thrash anymore, didn't try and wrangle free. 

Another woman would have worried about that. What sort of child does not try and escape from someone choking them?

(The answer: the sort of child who knows that to escape invites further hurt. Who has had the  _experience.)_

 _"They have to look at my eyes_ ," said the girl, the thing called Trish or Jael, and that gave Jeri a solution. 

"I'm going to let you up," said Jeri, "and if you try anything, I'll kill you."

Her hands flexed. Long fingers. Tiffany watch. The hands of a lawyer, not a child-killer. And yet. And  _yet_.

"Do you believe me?" prompted Jeri. 

There were already marks on the child's throat. Plum purple and strawberry red. A garland. 

She nodded. Tried to nod. It was monumentally hard to nod with someone straddling you. 

Jeri edged to a standing position, keeping her right hand clapped over the girl's eyes. The pads of her fingers bit in. She felt the hard, clean lines of skull. The slight dip of her temple. 

"Step back," she said. "Step back, like that, yes -- just like that --" and this way,  an awkward two-step, they made their way back through the house, to a homely kitchen that smelled of cookies. Sweet and cloying. 

"I want you to kneel," said Jeri. The girl knelt. The point of her knees clattered on the floor. Jeri followed her down, and opened up the under-the-sink cupboard. The pungency of household chemicals unfurled. The girl tensed up. 

"Please," she said, "please don't kill me like that, please I don't want to die that way --"

"Die which way?" Jeri said, thrown. 

"Bleach," said the girl. Her throat quivered. Her eyes flared huge under the clamp of Jeri's palm. 

"I'm not going to make you drink bleach."

One hand found what she was looking for. 

"I'm going to blindfold you."

She used duct tape. Wound it round and round and round. 

It was heartless. The duct tape would tear off lashes, brows and skin when it was removed -- it would take off half of that oil-slick hair. But it was the best thing to do. 

"Right," said the shark-faced lawyer, leaning back, rocking on to the balls of her feet. 

Her palms felt elastic, electric. Fight or flight instinct, simmered down on the crucible of horror, pulsing through her like mercury. 

"I need you to tell me the truth," she said. "Can you do that?"

"Yes," said the girl, "I can, of course I can."

"I'm not going to make you drink bleach," Jeri said, feeling the need to elucidate. "I'm not a monster."

"With all respect ma'am," said Jael-Trish, "I don't know that, do I? I know that you're a bitch of a lawyer. I don't know much else, really."

"What happened to Mr Ambrose?"

"Mr Ambrose tried to touch me, so I told him to cut his own wrists."

"So you killed him."

"Not  _technically_ \--"

"You killed him," said Jeri, again, and the girl's mouth pulled into a tight smile. 

"Yeah, I did. You sound nothing like my Dad."

"What's that meant to mean?"

"Nothing. Just --"

"Doesn't matter," Jeri cut in. She didn't want to get embroiled in this. The ins and outs of the kid's personal life cannot be her concern. "We need to get out of here.Uh. Where are we?"

"Suburbs; three miles from the city centre. There's your car outside." 

Jeri found a hoodie slumped over the sofa, thrust it over Trish-Jael's head, pulled the hood up tight. "Head down," she ordered. 

 

\--

 

Anyway. Here they are. She'd got the girl out of the nice suburban house, shoved her into the back of Mrs Ambrose's second car, bound her wrists up. Trish-Jael had been pliant, placid, malleable, letting Jeri manhandle her this way and that, hiding her beneath blankets and coats and stepping where she was told. 

And _here they are._

The girl sits cross-legged on Jeri's sofa. Her knees spike out beneath the skirt. Sharp things. Starved thing. 

_(My Dad was not a nice person --)_

Four fingers of scotch has done nothing to alleviate the whirligig of her thoughts. She eyes the rest of the bottle longingly, but she's going to need all her mental acuity to deal with this craziness.

She can't leave the girl. She wants to. Of course she wants to -- dump the thing on a street corner somewhere, eyes taped up. Then she can go back to her life. She can fuck the girl from accounting -- what was her name? -- little miss Charlotte. The one with the tits and the cold curve of a smile. Ambition seeping from each pore like venom sweating out. Gorgeous. Would look stunning on Jeri's desk, hands and feet opened up like points of a compass, knees canted wide. 

But. But that can't happen. 

Jael. Trish. Whatever, whoever, she is -- is she the sort to hold grudges? To come back? To, oh, do something like get half a dozen cops, meet their eyes one by one, get them to come in here all guns blazing -- it only lasts six hours, apparently, but six hours is enough. 

Red fingernails tap-tap on the gloss of her bar. Jeri's flat is what happens when money puddles in a space long enough to grow. Everything is sleek luxury. The room in which they sit is open-plan, cream carpet and cream walls, the colours picked by a woman who never worries about mess. The window takes up the far wall, letting in a spill of silver early morning light; the city opens up before them. Sometimes, Jeri likes to stand in front of the window and pretend that she's ruler of the entire world. 

This is not one of those times. The view is oppressive. Too open. Too wide. The enormity of it frightens her -- she thinks, for the first time, of people running about their business, following threads she cannot see, threads that may tangle this way and that but eventually lead to this girl. To her. 

She cannot leave the girl. Jael-Trish is still sitting on the sofa, chin tilted down, legs folded yoga-style, the slant of her shoulders and curl of her spine speaking not only of her present submission but of a  _life_ of submission. Jeri's seen enough broken people to know what they look like. 

She's seen enough broken people to know how unpredictable they are.

So. She cannot leave the girl.

Keeping her is also out of the question. She's a runaway. She is, in all likelihood, being hunted. The thought of her monstrous father sends climbing fingers of frost up Jeri's spine; her stomach roils with the fear of the unknown.

A man who would tell a mother to kill her own child. A mother who would not. A child who is monstrous in her own right but --

_Not as strong as my Dad._

That only really leaves one option: offload the child and run. 

It's not ideal. She's got a practice here; a life. Position. Status. But she's also got the well-honed instincts of a wild dog, and all of those instincts are telling her to flee.

She comes to a decision, and sets the glass down.

"Tell me about your Aunt Patsy," she says, turning back to the child.

"I don't know much," the girl says. Jael. Trish. Jeri wishes she could decide on what to call her, but then corrects herself. Giving the girl a name gives her an identity. A place. Giving the girl a name is a _bond_ and that won't do, won't do at all. 

So: Jeri will continue to think of the girl as the girl, Jael-Trish, Trish-Jael. Not her problem.

The voice that sounds awfully like Pam coos at the back of her head: _you heartless bitch._

 _I am what I am,_ she thinks back, and sits opposite the Jael-Trish girl.

"Tell me what you do know," Jeri prompts.

"She and my Mum were friends a while back. Sisters. Adopted. And then Dad took Mum away. Aunt Patsy is still here, I think. Mum said -- when she was free to speak to me; Dad didn't really like her doing that -- that she was here, in NYC, that if I ever escaped I should come here and find her."

"That's it? You don't know her name? Her address? Anything?"

Jael-Trish swallows. "Dad didn't like Mum remembering things that weren't him. He told her to forget so many times that only a little bit was left. She's...she's got a brain full of holes, she used to say, and the memories that survived often didn't make sense."

"Jesus," says Jeri. "Right. Aunt Patsy. Patsy. Not really a common name -- just a city of nine million." A hard little laugh clatters between her teeth. "Do you know your Mom's name?"

The girl nods. "Jessica Jones," she says.  

 

\--

 

 

Google is a wonderful thing. 

It takes around an hour, including a break for another drink, and Jeri has amassed a great trawl of scandal and heartache. 

Jessica Jones was the only survivor of a car crash that wiped out her entire family. She was adopted by Dorothy Walker, stage mom to the great Patsy Walker -- that treacle-smile little tot who sang and danced on the Patsy Walker show until she got tits and a drug habit and dropped off the radar. Jessica Jones, pictured sullen and slinking, had clearly never got into the family business. There was no record of her that wasn't connected to the Walker clan. Photo-ops aplenty, tales of Patsy's endless benevolence, a couple of interviews where she said how lucky she was. 

Jeri can see why they didn't pull her out in front of the cameras too often. Her smile was pure Addams family, her eyes hawkish and cold beneath black brows. 

The resemblance is striking. Take little Jessica Jones, starve her for a few months, carve up the ends of her fingers: there you have little Jael-Trish. 

Anyway. Jessica Jones, adopted child. 

Aunt Patsy is clearly Patsy Walker. 

After the show ended -- when Patsy was fifteen -- Patsy became Patricia Walker, radio-host and author. Over the next twelve years, she kept a relatively low profile: bringing out books every couple of years, doing signing tours, some interviews but always cagey about the Patsy Walker years. 

Then, three years ago, it all went wrong. 

Dorothy hadn't really been on the scene; there's nothing in the press about her, besides the occasional footnote to a Patsy Walker tale. However, three years ago, for whatever reason, Dorothy reappeared and made contact with her daughter. The papers didn't actually say what happened -- references were made to a struggle, a scandal -- but the upshot was: a restraining order. 

The stink of press-choking orders is all over the mess. Someone has layered lots and lots of money over this, smothering scandal with legal restraints. 

 

After that, Patricia Walker vanishes. 

The books stop. The signing tours stop. The interviews end. No one has heard hide nor hair of her; she's old news, faded like chalk in the rain. 

She could be fucking  _anywhere_. 

On the other hand, Dorothy Walker has a website. 

She's still working. Still an agent. Makes a pretty good living off it, if her zipcode is anything to go by. There's a phone number. No address. Still, it's something. 

Jeri reaches for the phone.

 

\--

 

"Hi! Is this Miss Walker? My name's  _Ms. Amberly_ \-- I'm phoning about my little girl Alaska. Wondering if we could set up an appointment? Uh-huh.  _Uh-huh_. Well, thank you very much -- yes, that one! I'm so glad you've heard of little Avalon. You can see us tomorrow? Perfect. The girls are just  _dying_ to meet you."

 

\--

 

"Who's Amberly?"

"Former pageant queen. Has two little girls. Avalon and Alaska -- trying to get into showbiz. Avalon, the older, got into a couple of TV shows last year."

"D'you know her?"

"Never met her. Seen her enough to be able to do the voice."

"Impressive."

"Thanks."

"So, what do I do til tomorrow?"

"Stay here," says Jeri, flat steel in her voice. Jael-Trish straightens her spine up, a hint of a smile in the corners of her mouth -- relief, Jeri realises with a sick little lurch, like she expected to be turfed into the streets.

( _don't make me drink bleach --)_

"You can sleep on the sofa," she says. 

She's got a spare bed, but she remembers the ugly curl of foreign will in her brain, the  _puppetry_ \--

So yeah. Call it petty. 

The girl obligingly pulls her knees up, tilts her whole skinny frame to the side, ready to nest there and then. 

"Have you eaten?" says Jeri, as an afterthought. 

"No," says the girl. Her small pink tongue sweeps over her lower lip. It snags on the scabs. She's got fucking scars on her mouth, like she's been chewing on her lips since time immemorial.

"Want something to eat?"

"Yes. Oh God _yes_."

 

\--

 

They get takeaway. Trish-Jael manages a pizza and a half on her own, using her hands to shovel slices of scalding cheese and meat between her teeth, hardly chewing, eating like a baby falcon, like someone's going to snatch it away at any time.

When she sleeps, it's in tense lines and shuddering. Fists clench and unclench. She chews her lower lip until blood starts to dribble down her chin.

Jeri polishes off the scotch, watching her.

Then she goes to bed as well, and does not dream.

 

\--

 

"Can you do that thing on her? Make her tell us whatever we need to know?"

"I need my eyes free," says Jael-Trish. "I need her to look at me. And then yeah. Yeah I can."

"If I uh, if I unblindfold you," is that even a word? "will you use that shit on me?"

"What would the point be?"

The girl voice sharpens with frustration. Her hands are still bound, her head dipped down, hoodie up over her face, curls of black hair floating free. She's still in the clothes she wore yesterday, long skirt and heavy boots, and she looks like a gypsy runaway. 

Jeri's hands spike white around the wheel. She doesn't really have a choice, not really, and it tastes sour at the back of her throat. She's afraid of the girl, and she hates her, and she needs her.

Where's her courtroom polish? 

 

\--

 

 

Patsy Walker beams down, lunar-bright, from a wall-wide portrait at her mother's back.

It's Patsy in her heyday, with hair as red as Pippi Longstocking, a big gap-toothed smile, apple cheeks, touch of mascara and slick of lip gloss to bring out that childish glow.

Dorothy is staring. So is Jael-Trish. The air sings and crackles with tension.

Neither have spoke for about ten minutes. Just staring.  

 "Look at me," the girl says again. "Look  _in_ me," and Dorothy breathes out in a low painful wheeze. "Right," continues Jael-Trish, "you're going to tell me where to find your daughter. Write it down please."

Dorothy doesn't look away. Her tanned orange hands skitter over the desk, find a pad and a pen, and she scrawls down an address. 

"Take it," says Jael-Trish, addressing Jeri. 

Jeri snatches it up. 

"Tell me what happened to my mother."

"I don't know who your mother is."

"Her name is Jessica Jones. Tell me everything you know about her."

"I adopted her. She was a publicity stunt. She was very annoying. She vanished with some guy fifteen years ago. Trish was heartbroken. She loved that little cunt. But there was always something strange about her. Her medical bills were paid by a Dr Koslov. He's a good man. He's helping me." Dorothy rattles off words like someone shaking teeth onto concrete. 

"Helping you?" 

"With the cancer."

"Tell me about that."

"I have cancer. I'm dying. They say I have three months."

"You don't look bad for someone dying of cancer."

"I work hard to keep up appearances."

"My Mum said you hurt her," says the girl. "When she was little, I mean." 

It's not a question. Dorothy doesn't reply. Her stare is fixed, flat, clean. There's a trail of red seeping from under Jael-Trish's nose. 

"Take off your wig. Now."

Dorothy snatches her lustrous blonde hair off, revealing a shiny pink scalp. 

"And the lashes. Don't stop looking at me! Just do it."

The lashes cling to Dorothy's fingers like spiders.

Jeri's throat is thick. She really should say something. Do something. But she's half hypnotized, her limbs slack and useless.

"Slap yourself in the face."

The sound is hard, organic and it echoes.

"Again! Harder!"

Red bloom on white skin.

More blood under the girl's nose. A bit from her mouth, but that could be her ruined lips.

"Easy Ja -- Trish --" says Jeri. "Easy. Come on."

"She hurt my mother," says Jael-Trish. "I've never been able to hurt anyone who hurt my mother, not ever, and I want to I want to --  _hit yourself again --"_

Jeri slaps her hand over the girl's eyes. Dorothy folds forward, her head lolling onto the desk, a hard high sound of utter pain wrenching from the back of her throat.

"We've got what we wanted," says Jeri. "Come on, let's go."

"I want to fucking  _kill her_ ," the girl screams, her accent hardening, her teeth showing, thrashing against Jeri's grip. 

Jeri picks her up: an armful of wildness. 

"Calm down JT," she hisses. "C'mon. Let's go."

 

\--

 

Back in the car. The girl's hands are bound, her eyes covered with more duct tape. 

She's smiling. 

"What's wrong with you?"

"JT. I like it."

"That's what you took away from that? A nickname?"

"I've never had a name. Not really."

"Right. Care to tell me what that was back there?"

"She used to beat the shit out of my aunt. She used to hurt my Mum."

"So you thought you'd hurt her. Fine. Fair. But do it afterwards -- when you're with your aunt. Don't drag me into this shit."

"I'm sorry," says the girl. She sounds sincere. 

Jeri's thinking of the bared white teeth, the thrash of sharp little ankles, the snarl. 

She's right about broken people, she knows. 

They're really fucking unpredictable. 

 

"So," she says, "I'm going to drop you off with your aunt --"

The car in front of them brakes hard, and the front of Jeri's car crumples up, folds of metal screaming like orphaned children, and JT cries out, high and lost, and the door's wrenched open and there are hands, hands on Jeri, pulling her out and thrusting her to her knees and there's a gun, and a cop. 

A cop. Blonde. Blue eyes. Vision coming in fragments, heartbeats, threat of death sharpening everything up. Crush of concrete under her legs. JT's continued cries, someone saying  _what the fuck is up with her eyes_ and someone else saying, a male voice -- a male  _English_ voice --

"Hello little girl! Daddy's found you. Isn't that great?"

 


	3. jessica

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jessica Jones remembers.
> 
> In which a little is explained, and much is questioned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit more backstory -- e.g. I explain my bastardisation of canon. Hopefully you don't hate me for it. I didn't want to write future!fic so I had to alter the timeline a bit to keep it all in the modern day. 
> 
> Fret not, all the characters show up -- but maybe not in the guise you would expect them. 
> 
> (once again, constructive criticism is much appreciated! let me know what you love, what you hate, what you want to happen next!)

_fifteen years ago._

Trish is drunk. 

This isn't new. She's been hitting the booze hard since quitting the pills and powder, and Jess doesn't mind. She would rather manhandle a slurring singing armful of blonde joy to a taxi than splash water in the face of a blood-nosed crackwhore.

"Jessica.  _Jessica_. Love you," says Trish, a spill of warmth and family in Jessica's arms. 

Jess is drunk as well, of course. A fake ID, proclaiming her to be one year older than she actually is, simmers in her pocket, ticket to all sorts of good times. All sorts of coping. 

(Coping has a lot of tunes, she finds. It's one big clashing medley, all songs singing the same cry of 'this never happened' and it's not healthy, not really, but she's barely twenty. She doesn't really  _do_ facing up to the past -- there is so much past, some days she fears it will break her back.)

Get Trish in the cab, that's the key. Back to their apartment -- well, it's Trish's -- but she crashes on the sofa most nights.

"Love you," says Trish, again, her nose bashing up against the line of Jessica's collarbone. Her hands knot up in Jessica's jacket. She's close enough to kiss, and Jessica's breath is catching at the back of her throat, at some high tight place that oxygen just can't pass. She closes her eyes. Wills the world to realign.

It doesn't work. 

She can still smell Trish: sweetness of perfume, bitter bite of vodka. Still feel her, pressed long and warm and close. Still  _hear her heart_ \-- butterfly-hammer at her pulse and her wrists and what if Jessica was to bend, touch lips to skin, taste those pulsepoints, taste _and_  --

Trish, thankfully, chooses that moment to puke down Jessica's front. 

"Jesus  _fuck_ Walker -- what the shit is wrong with you?"

 

\--

 

Jessica cleans Trish up and puts her to bed. Trish is dead to the world in half a moment and, out of habit, Jessica pops her in the recovery position. 

"Don't die on me Walker," she says, voice coming out a little thick. She's got a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, lights it with a flicker of her lighter. She exhales a curl of blue smoke and wonders if her super-strength extends to her lungs. Imagine that. Reinforced lungs. Cancer-proof insides. 

Wouldn't that be grand?

Trish is breathing still. Good.

"Hey Trish? Remember when you stopped breathing on me? We were what, fifteen? Sixteen? You'd been on the coke for two years by then. You took the shit your Mom gave you, did some lines with your dealer, mixed it with some E -- some shit that came in a pill anyway -- and you started to choke and then you stopped breathing. Went blue as someone fuckin'...someone fucking dying of pneumonia. Someone on fucking Everest. You were blue, your lips and the tips of your fingers were blue and I was so scared, I'd never been so scared. I called the ambulance. Your Mom hit me for that. On my face, cos she was too angry to think. She always hit you on your stomach cos the bruises wouldn't show."

Her eyelids are very heavy. A yawn cracks her face open, and she stabs the cigarette out on the bedside drawer. Trish'll bitch her out for the charmark tomorrow, but she can't bring herself to care. Exhaustion rolls over her in breaking waves, and she sprawls out on the bed, head lolled on one side and falls into a deep and dreamless slumber. 

The girls don't touch. They curve towards each other, fingers and toes reaching, like two moons circling some distant planet. 

 

\--

 

Three weeks later, and Trish has changed her phone number four times. 

"How the fuck does she keep getting it?" she says. Bitterness spikes her words. Her teeth show around the word 'fuck' like it's a bite from the middle of the sentence. "I want to... _fuck_ Jessica, why doesn't she leave me alone?"

"You're her cashcow," Jessica says. She's painting her nails. Curving the file around, creating a shapely little crescent. Small indulgences. They keep you sane. "And she can't stomach losing control of you."

"That's it to her. That's all it fucking is."

Jessica blows on her nails, quirks a brow in query. 

Trish hisses a hard breath. "Control," she clarifies. "All she wants. All she's ever wanted. Not love; control. I'm not her daughter -- she wants me back because she can't stand the thought of something out there she can't _fucking_ control."

"Yup." A lick of polish now. Red?

"I hate her."

Red works.

"She's nothing. She's scum. Stop telling old friends your phone number."

"I've only told you, and Karl --"

"Karl, her old intern?"

"He's my friend!"

"Hm. It's him or me. One of us sold you out."

Jessica's fingernails glisten wet and scarlet. She flaps her hands around to dry them.

Trish doesn't even have to think. Her pretty face creases in despair and rage. "That bastard!"

They have this conversation four more times, and each time Trish loses another friend.

By the time they've lost her mother, Trish has precisely one person left.

 

\--

 

This is what could have happened: Jessica Jones and Trish Walker share her flat. They live off Trish's royalties. Jessica Jones gets fired from seventeen deadend jobs before she lands a gig at a Krav Maga gym in Hell's Kitchen, run by the single most terrifying lesbian in all of New York. She learns to use her hands and feet as weapons, and she teaches others to do the same. She teaches Trish. One day, while sparring, they bump noses. There's blood in their first kiss, but there's laughter as well. Jessica does not get a superhero name. She does not get a costume. She quits her job at the gym and starts up Alias investigations. She specializes in helping abused women flee their menfolk. She marries Trish three days after her twenty eighth birthday. They have two sons. They are happy. 

This is what could have happened: Jessica Jones wears the costume Trish bought her. She fights crime, wearing cynicism like an ill-fitting suit; her optimism shines through, bright and sharp. She still thinks the world is worth saving. She dies at the age of twenty five, because she thought that no one would be depraved enough to use a child as a suicide bomber and she went back to save a little girl. Trish attends her funeral. Trish survives, because that is what she does. The rest of her life is of no note. 

This is what could have happened: Trish and Jessica fall into bed, teeth and tongue and hands everywhere. They are twenty and ruinous. They fuck for three months. Trish catches Jessica with her knees canted open, a shark-eyed lawyer called Jeri Hogarth between her thighs. Neither was ready for anything like love, but they don't know that. They part in pain, and they never speak again. 

This is what could have happened: Jessica and Trish set up Alias Investigations together. They investigate the sordid corners of Hell's Kitchen. Trish marries a man called Luke Cage. Jessica drinks too much, a little too much, and falls into a river and drowns and Trish dies in childbirth and --

This is what could have happened. Possibilities branch out like the reach of a Banyan tree, reaching out endless, diverging again and again, until they vanish into the ether.

In one world, this. In another, that. 

In this: Jessica Jones is twenty and she goes out for a smoke. 

 

\--

 

"I'm gonna stop at some point," Jessica calls back to Trish. Trish barks out laughter, and lifts a glass of wine in a mockery of a toast. Her teeth flash white and her tongue is pink as it snakes out to touch the rim of her glass and a deep throb lances in Jessica's stomach. 

She shakes her head like a dog trying to clear its ears of water, like she can dislodge errant thoughts quite so easily. She pictures them flying free, pinning to the wall. Crack her skull open, and there would just be ten thousand thousand pictures of Trish. 

It's a sickness, or something like it. 

Outside, she lights up. Her cigarette glows in the blue-black of night, a point of amber. 

Lately, her skin feels too tight. Her heartbeat is too loud, her blood too hot -- she feels claustrophobic, drowning, and not even Trish's presence can alleviate the tension. She wants...something. Well: she wants Trish, and that's nothing new, but she wants something  _else_ and it is the  _else_ which is making her teeth ache in frustration. 

Last week, she got sacked again. She hasn't been to college -- hasn't got the inclination to go -- and she can't find her place. Can't find her feet. The world is spinning on, and she can't find her still point on which to stand. 

Maybe that's why she wants Trish. Trish, for all her madness, is at least constant. Always there. 

Jessica inhales, sharp and bitter, and feels herself start to teeter. Maybe she should say something to Trish. Maybe she --

There's a scream: an inarticulate human cry of pain. 

The cigarette fizzles where Jessica flings it. She spins on her heels, and she runs. 

 

\--

 

 

The guys delivering the beating are Hispanic-looking, muscles cut sharp under tight white t-shirts. They've chosen the location well: an alleyway secreted to the side of an artisan bakery (yeah, it's that sort of neighbourhood), shadows puddling between buildings and in those shadows slumps the victim, and four guys knot around him. All she sees of him is a flash of ghostwhite skin. Fabric that could be a suit. It's too dark to discern colour.

"Hey!" Jessica barks out, "assholes!" and she doesn't stop striding forwards, doesn't pose and posture and trade insults because this isn't a movie and the element of surprise is vital, even when you're as strong as she.

First guy turns. Her fist breaks his nose. She's not good with technique, she's never learned skill, but savagery and strength and shock will carry you far. First guy cries out, shudders back, blood like tar in the streetlight. She spins, one heel grinding into the ground and the other foot lashing out, hard and fast and second guy gags and chokes, eyes going crossed and watering. Third and fourth start forwards, only to be grabbed by the throats and hoisted off the ground. Jugulars pulse hot at her palms. The power's hypnotic. One squeeze and they're dead. One twist and they're dead. Let them go, let them hang, it's all down to her: power of life and death in the cage of her fingers. 

She lets go. They sprawl to the ground, matching red-black garlands carved upon their necks. Her fingerprints set there, from now until the end of time. 

Something like that. 

They scrabble to their feet and bolt. All four of them, scrambling from her, frightened mice fleeing a cat. 

For a moment, she stares at her palms.

"Wow," says the man on the floor. 

She'd forgotten about him. 

He's a skinny man in a dark purple suit, knees all akimbo, a bruise swelling his lower lip, blood smeared at his temples, his mouth a tight clamp over a pained shout. 

"I'm Kilgrave," says the man. Jessica catches his proffered hand, tugs him upwards. He leans on her as he stands, one hand pressed to his ribs. "The bastards didn't speak a lick of English. Not much point telling them what to do if they don't sodding understand you. You're a clever girl, aren't you? You speak the mother tongue. Do me a favour and give me a kiss."

She does. She doesn't have a choice. 

 

\--

 

 

_eight years ago._

"Look, look -- that's a horrible habit! Don't bite your fingernails like that. Actually: no. Keep going. Keep biting your fingernails. Keep going until I tell you to stop."

Patricia looks at Jessica. 

"Jessica, forget who she is."

There's a girl chewing her nails and weeping. Jessica steps forward to comfort her, to pluck those soft starfish hands from her nibbling teeth, but Kilgrave plonks a hand on her shoulder, lips at her ear, says, "Stay there."

And Jessica stays. She's rooted. All she can do is watch as the girl starts on her cuticles, whining in pain --

"Look," says Kilgrave. "You don't have to watch. It's her punishment, not yours."

"Who is she? Does she have a name?"

"She's nothing. Come to bed."

 

_\--_

 

_the present day._

 Jessica Jones steps out of the shower and looks in the mirror. She assesses her body: it is hers, and hers alone. Hers to study. Hers to move, to clean, to clothe in what she wants to wear. No more purple, not now and not ever.

She drinks in the sight of herself.

Bruises thicken beneath deep-sunken eyes, her mouth is bruised. Her feet are striped with burgundy scabs. One of her toenails is black and ready to drop off. The pain in her soles is a lowslung, distinct ache. She's walked barefoot for miles. Barefoot for miles with --

\-- with a hand in hers. 

Yes. Yes. Memory is like an avalanche. One chunk of snow slides free, and everything begins to fall. 

 

\--

 

_three days ago._

"Bastard! Get away from my Mum.  _Get away from my Mum_."

The girl's fists are clenched. There's blood pouring from her eyes. There's blood in her mouth and in her ears and in the pores of her forehead, springing out like wells drilled deep, and she is shaking all over, quivering with effort, veins popping and pulsing at her throat and face and she's a ruin, a wreck. 

Jessica knows the girl.

She does not know the girl.

(forget her forget her)

(i don't want her you forget her  _do you understand you forget her)_

(it's like having a brain full of holes --)

"Bow down!" the girl screams, and she coughs out blood as she does so, like the lining of her throat is peeling away and coating her tongue. 

A wet warm slap of red on Kilgrave's face. His knees quiver, then buckle and Kilgrave, Kilgrave  _kneels_.

Savage joy needles behind Jessica's eyes. She does not know the girl, she does not know her 

(forget her i do not want her)

but she's shaking with joy, igniting with it, and she can't move; his order to stand anchors her; but her brain is a riot, a singing scrum, and the girl could be a saviour could be 

( _i know her_ )

everything,  _everything_. 

The girl can barely stand. Her breathing is congested. She coughs with every other exhale, and her face is more red than white. 

"You bitch," growls Kilgrave. He's locked eyes with the girl. Jessica's hands clench, and she wants to move, she wants to lunge for the girl, pull her into a hug. 

But why? Why?

What is the girl to her?

(every morning, every single morning, the words: forget the girl.)

(and yet the girl is always here.)

"Kill her," says Kilgrave, and gestures to Jessica. 

(i do not know this girl. this child. she will die she must die she must die)

And Jessica Jones steps forwards. 

She is acutely aware of her breathing. Oxygen surges up and down her throat, cold and sharp, her lungs ballooning up against her ribs. The ridges of her ribs against the tissue of her lungs. Her breath. Yes. Her breath, and it fills her up and Kilgrave's orders are as vital as that breath, they stir her as that breath, they fill her up top to bottom, head to toe. 

She breathes. He orders. She obeys.

The girl, the girl must die. 

She steps forwards. One step. Another. 

The girl collapses. The bloodflow is congealing. Her nose is a red thatch, her eyes are swimming scarlet, her lips half-open and blood beading bright on the cracked lizardskin. 

Still. Jessica pauses. She pauses with her breath caught at the top of her lungs, with the orders snagging on her skin like fish-hooks.

"Kill her!" shouts Kilgrave again. 

Kill the girl. 

"Mum," says the girl, " _please_." And as she speaks a trail of red froths between her teeth.

Mum.  _Mum_. 

Her breath catches again, swoops high, and for a moment she forgets her own name.

That is the girl. That is who she is. 

(what is her name?)

(kilgrave snarling: she does not have a name)

And that's it: she's not breathing anymore, she's not obeying anymore, and her feet are bare against the smooth wood floor and she grabs her child and she  _runs_.

 

\--

 

_present day._

Jessica doesn't cry. She does, however, help herself to a large brandy and sit open-legged on Trish's couch. 

"So," she says.

"So," echoes Trish. She's got her knees pressed together, her fingers tight around a mug off coffee. 

"You don't drink anymore?"

"Nope. Rehab's not fun."

"You stayed in it this time?"

"I had to get my life together on my own," Trish says. "You weren't there --"

"It wasn't my fault!"

"I wasn't blaming you. Fuck's sake Jess."

"I missed you every day. I..." and the words, three little words, totter onto the base of her tongue but she swallows them down again. 

"Let me start at the beginning," she says. "I was twenty, and I went out for a smoke..."


End file.
